Cultural appropriation should be punishable by having an acorn falling on your head. After that catastrophe you should live out your days in mortal-fear of global catastrophe. And when you least expect it you should be eaten by a sneaky but smart tod*.
Any English-person of a certain era and with a child would recognize elements of that as a reference to the fate of Chicken-Licken. They would share my outrage at finding that on this side of the Atlantic it has been usurped by the tale of Chicken Little. Even worse, the Henny Penny Corporation (!) claimed in 2011 that Chicken Licken is the “largest non-American-owned fried chicken franchise in the world”.
Naming a company responsible for the Evolution Elite Open Fryer, used to deep-fry chicken for commercial purposes, after an innocent nursery rhyme fowl seems wrong on every level. I am left wondering if the aforementioned Chicken Licken hands out Foxy Loxy masks to all its customers as they gorge on the product. And do they do a sideline in Goosey Loosey pieces or Ducky Lucky fries?
My deep dive on the subject led me to discover that there is a formal classification system for organizing, classifying, and analyzing folklore narratives. It’s pretty heady stuff when you consider that four-year olds decide which ones they like, without any guidance. But step forward and take a bow Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne who published the first version as Verzeichnis der Märchentypen in 1910.
Next time I’m asked what the Finns have ever done for Western civilization I can add this to my short list that has previously only included staving off the Russians in 1944, cross-country skiing, and being a potential punchline to any joke which contains the words “I’ve started…..”. I guess that their other major contribution has been winning the Eurovision Song Contest with a heavy metal band (Lordi with Hard Rock Hallelujah in 2006). It made Dana and All Kinds of Everything seem a very long time ago.
For the record the first publication of this European folk-story came in 1823 when Just Mathias Thiele published a version in Danish. Beguilingly the main character was Kylling Kluk, with the word Kylling being Danish for a chick. It all ended badly with everyone getting eaten by the fox which suggests it may have been a trial run for Danish TV series and smash hit, The Killing.
Out of fairness I will acknowledge that the all-powerful Wikipedia suggests that Chandler’s publication of ‘The Remarkable Story of Chicken Little’ in 1840 appears to pre-date any English versions. But the title is a typical example of over-statement and hysteria which would be better reserved for the era of conspiracy theorists. What’s ‘remarkable’ about farmyard animals getting together because they think the world is coming to an end?
More sober and appropriate is ‘The Story of Chicken-licken’ published by Halliwell in 1849. Critically, the animals are purposeful and set out to tell the King about their vision of catastrophe while Chandler’s animals just milled around in a frightened manner before being eaten. Right now, of course, this seems to be a good metaphor for both the Republican party in the US and Theresa May’s Government in the UK.
If I was seeking further proof of the rightness of Chicken-licken my clincher would be that Chicken Little doesn’t even rhyme. There is no point to Chandler having Hen Pen, Duck Luck, Goose Loose et al when the main character is a startlingly poor example of blank verse. Perhaps that’s what comes of having someone who was primarily a wood-engraver and lithographer trying to tell a tale of everyday farm animals in a state of moral panic.
*tod is Scottish dialect for fox (it’s also a unit of weight for 28lb of wool but the notion of a carnivorous ball of wool would mean I’d never wear a jumper again)